Just about two years ago, Nicholas Braun was at the Lucille Lortel Theater, watching fellow television stars Christopher Abbott and Aubrey Plaza shine in a revival of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea. He’d never booked a professional stage gig, but the idea of doing an intimate two-hander at the historic West Village space appealed to him—a feeling that only grew stronger as productions like Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary!, Hold On to Me Darling with Adam Driver, and Andrew Scott’s one-man Vanya kept up the prestige.
The Succession star told Seaview’s Greg Nobile of his dream, and soon the script for Rajiv Joseph’s 2009 play Gruesome Playground Injuries was in his hands. Then word trickled in that two-time Tony winner Kara Young was interested in starring opposite him. Braun hadn’t gotten the chance to see her work onstage, but he knew this would be huge. Suddenly, what in March of this year looked like a spring 2026 possibility became a November reality.
A week ago, I found Braun and Young cozied up in his dressing room. It’s reachable through the theater’s auditorium, but he took the scenic route there, through a small back alley. With just over an hour before that evening’s preview performance, the two were already spent from the early sunset and a day’s worth of ironing out the production’s kinks. Once they got talking about the intricacies of the play, however, their spirits were up again.
Young was drawn to the time-jumps in Joseph’s story, which follows two friends from the age of eight to 38, with each scene moving either 15 years forward or 10 years back. “It’s one of the great exercises for an actor,” she said, adding that she was excited to fill in the linear blanks left by the script. As the title suggests, the friends don’t have the easiest go of it; what starts as an innocent schoolyard accident for Doug leads to a life of hurt, both for him and Kayleen. No matter how time and circumstance pull them apart, they have a strange, strong bond rooted in an understanding of each other’s pain.
“We’ve been discussing the humanity that is brought forward, in regards to the human connection with the people who might love us the most, or at least once in our lives,” Young added. “Does that love ever go away? Have we missed opportunities with people? It makes me think about the friendships that I treasured once that, due to time and work and life, there’s not a consistency around what it means to reach out and tap in. I feel like this is a reminder to reach out to the people you love the most, no matter what happened between you.”
Here, the two chat with Vogue about the show.
Vogue: These characters are so symbiotic. How do you work on your character individually, knowing that, in a way, it only exists as an extension of the other one?
Kara Young: Rajiv laid out specifics about each character. It’s very clear to me that they come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and that paints a picture of what their lives might look like moving forward. When we meet Kayleen at the age of 23, she mentions what her occupation is, and Doug has been living a completely different life, almost free of worry. Rajiv has given us so much on the page, the littlest details that open up each of their worlds. As we got to the fourth preview, I started to realize the severity of these humans’ brokenness in their own ways.
Nicholas Braun: There are clues in the writing as to, what does she need? What does he need? And then it’s working backwards and going, I’m going to try and give that to her in this scene. If she’s in a bad relationship and feels all alone and overworked, then I’m coming in to give her that love. They’re the thing each other needs the most, so let’s go towards that. They fill in all the gaps for each other.
The characters, as kids, are so recognizable. Who were each of you on the playground?
Young: I always felt like I was a fairy, just sitting and observing people. Like, what can I get? Can I get you some water?
Were you helping the kids that were getting bruises?
Young: Oh, absolutely. I was trained to be a conflict mediator when I was in the third or fourth grade. Tell me what happened. This is how it’s going to work: I’ll choose whoever goes first, and then you tell me from your perspective… all that. But I was friends with everybody, too. I was friends with the popular kids or whatever, but also the kids people made fun of. I just loved everybody.
Braun: I did not know that existed.
Young: I went to a really hippie elementary school, though.
Braun: I was not mediating, no. I got injured pretty frequently. I had an incident when I was in second grade where I was riding on the front of a mini bulldozer, and there was another kid my age driving it, whose dad worked at this landscaping company. I was sitting on it and he brought the bulldozer bucket onto my feet and crushed both of them. That put me in a wheelchair for a couple months.
There’s this idea in the play of being brave versus being stupid. Has that been fun to explore?
Braun: That has not been explored, but we will now explore it! My character’s not a heady person; he’s an instinctual person who just goes towards things. That’s what I like about playing him: He doesn’t wonder whether he should do something, he just does it and takes the repercussions afterwards. That doesn’t make him stupid, but I think the kid who’s willing to throw himself at everything—seemingly the idiot or class clown—just likes to try and feel some pain or get attention.
Young: That’s a thing I don’t think we’ve talked about yet: getting attention. I think it’s a theme in the play, in a huge way. There is a very human flaw of feeling pity on ourselves.
This production comes at a time when I feel like everyone I know, myself included, is wilin’ out in some way and going towards something. Do you feel that? Is that hard to leave at the theater?
Braun: There’s a lot of distance between people right now. I think, generally, it’s hard to be social. I don’t know, maybe it’s age. She and I—the characters, but also me and Kara—are so hyper-connected and interested in each other and in telling each other things. There’s so much connection in this play—I don’t know where you can find [that] out there in the world today. Hopefully when people come, they see these two people really locked in in a way that feels rare. I mean, I don’t know if I have a relationship that’s as deep as this one that these two go through.
We’re still trying to figure out exactly how we want people to feel at the end of this. We’re wondering, Is that our job? But it does feel like this play is happening at a particular time where there are a lot of inhumane things happening, and in a way that hasn’t happened in a long time. We’re getting desensitized to it. So I think coming, spending an hour and a half with two people that are completely humane towards each other, maybe there’s a shock in that, or something really satisfying.
Young: I challenge us to feel. I challenge us to remember what love is like, to remember our best friends from childhood. The way that we started the conversation was that these humans met in a time when they connected in this kind of way. Whether it is a toxic friendship or not, they lose touch in time, and we’re losing touch with love. We’re losing touch with the reason why we are here on this earth together. I mean, we don’t exist without each other.
Braun: We’re not thinking about people within the context of their life. Maybe this person is in this situation because of what happened to them when they were a kid, or how their life has gone for the past 20 years. It’s just, Well, that’s who they are and they need to change. People are just getting smaller and smaller, getting shrunk down to things, put in a box. With the play, it’s about putting a magnifying glass on two people. We’re not doing that too much outside. That’s why I think it feels good to do right now. I don’t know that I’ve experienced this range of emotions or connection or anything in my life.
Kara, have you been taking Nick under your experienced stage wing?
Braun: I’m a student of Kara Young.
Young: No, no, don’t say that. We’ve been learning so much from each other. He’s an incredibly dynamic actor. I mean, we look very different—not just a white man and a Black woman, but we’re different sizes—and I don’t feel that. People are like, Oh my God, you’re so tall, you’re so short. In some way it makes us very similar, because the world is always commenting on that. I don’t feel like I’m challenged by our differences in this experience, which is really special.
You guys do everything within view. How’s it been applying your own makeup and changing outfits onstage?
Braun: I love it. I think it’s so fun. What’s cool about the play, amongst a lot of other things, is that you don’t often get to see the backstage work. I’m pulling off wounds, I’m reapplying them, et cetera. It’s really fun for me to learn how to do makeup and do it blind, because we’re not looking at mirrors. It’s a fun challenge, and she and I do things for each other throughout the play to help get ready for the next scene.
What do you think that adds to the story?
Braun: It’s maybe a little bit about the body and how it can get broken down over life. I think it’s fascinating when I go from 18 to 33. I’m in teenage clothes, then putting on clothes that are for a heavier guy. Life hits him in those 15 years. These things are artificial, they’re just things you put on yourself, but we’ve loaded them up with history and feeling. Here’s what happens when you have a scar, or wear a certain jacket. I don’t know exactly what the metaphor is, but I know how it makes me feel.
Young: I know exactly what you’re saying. It’s just history. It’s history applied in real time.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.